Bloomfield Hills High School radio station reaches audience with new app, website

Mark Stewart, a senior at Bloomfield Hills High School, shows off the new BIFF app on his mobile device, which is free to anyone who would like to listen to the WBHS radios station. Mark hosts a talk-music show on the station.

Bloomfield High School students Mark Stewart and Blake Perlman at work at the school’s WBHS ìBIFFî student radio station, which is temporarily without an antenna but has found its new app and its live streaming web page is widening its audience. Antenna-less student broadens audience with new app & website.

Anyone who has ever turned on a radio knows a station has to have a tower to broadcast the programming, right?

Not so with today’s new technology.

Student radio broadcasters such as Mark Stewart and Blake Perlman, and station manager Pete Bowers at Bloomfield Hills High School’s award-winning WBFH 88.1 FM radio station, known as the Biff, have found two new methods to keep broadcasting their music, sports and hot topic talk shows since they lost their tower in June.

Not only that, they have broadened their reach to prospective audiences through a new “BIFF” app and livestreaming programming on their website www.bloomfield.org/departments/wbfhfm-the-biff/index.aspx.

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The 2013 High School Radio Station of the Year now has a new distinction of being only the second high school radio station that has its own app to the best of his knowledge, said Bowers, who keeps up with all high school radio stations nationally as part of his High School Radio Day, a national program.

The Biff radio station has been without a broadcasting tower since Andover and Lahser high schools merged into Bloomfield Hills High School’s main campus at the former Lahser building.

So WBFH, known as “The BIFF” radio is still in transition at their new location and in the process of getting FCC and other approvals to put their tower at a Bloomfield Township fire station.

“I think the app is a big step forward for the Biff because this is first year for the radio station without a radio tower,” said Mark, 17, a senior who hosts “The Breakdown” show that includes talk and a variety of music at 3 p.m. Thursdays.

“Our listeners have been tuning into our website, which isn’t always easy. I think the app will definitely increase our audience becauce it is easier and has more features,” said Mark.

At the same time, the station switched to a new service provider, Secure Systems, which offered to create an app as part of its services. The only cost to the station was $1,000 to Apple, said Bowers.

The app, which can be uploaded free on any mobile device, makes it much easier for Bloomfield High students and anyone else to listen to the station wherever they are, 24 hours a day, with live student programming from 3 to 9 p.m. school days, said Bowers.

Although they look forward to the time when a new tower is up and their listeners can go back to the ease of jumping in their car and turning on The Biff to their favorite program, they won’t be retiring the app and the website now that they have seen the advantages of the technology.

“I think our listenership will increase because the younger generation” listens to their music on mobile devices, said Mark, in his third year at the station and planning on studying business but maintaining his interest in broadcast and music.

All students who work at the radio station are required to take Bowers’ introduction course and then apply. Right now, 24 students are working in various capacities at WBFH, which has been high school radio station of the year eight times, he said.